I always enjoyed explaining to patients what we do, why, what they should do for aftercare and what happens afterwards. What I don’t like is the grind that’s nursing and how immature, lazy and uneducated, proud antivaxers, many nurses I work with are.
The subjects don’t seem that difficult, it would be simply studying more comprehensibly anatomy, biology, chemistry, medicines, OR, legal…
I find it realistic to pass this bachelor but I’m on the older side already. My fears are:
-
a reduced job pool: everyone needs nurses, but the need for PAs is not as big. I’d have less choice.
-
age discrimination: true that most of us will have to work till 70 or 72 but I’m still afraid of being rejected for being old.
OTOH: better work life balance and clearly more money in a field that’s not completely unknown to me and I don’t hate.
It sounds like you are possibly in an ambulatory role (maybe?) with patient education. My spouse has bounced between a few different floor positions, including ICU, then went to ambulatory, and now does outpatient chemo infusion as sort of a compromise. Each move corresponded with burnout. The floor became too rough, ambulatory became too boring and bureaucratic (but learned a LOT from providers), but the outpatient infusion setting seems to strike a good balance, at least for now. She heavily considered a NP/PA route, but it’s more school, money, and you’re on salary with long hours (no overtime!). Sufficed to say, there’s probably a niche for you too!